Related papers: ULX behaviour: the ultraluminous state, winds & in…
Here we show that the overabundance of ultra-luminous, compact X-ray sources (ULXs) associated with moderately young clusters in interacting galaxies such as the Antennae and Cartwheel can be given an alternative explanation that does not…
Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) were an enigma since their discovery. ASCA showed that they are accreting black holes (BHs) with unknown mass, while Chandra & XMM data shows that the many of the lower luminosity ULXs can be explained by…
An ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) in NGC 5252 has been known as a strong candidate for an off-nuclear intermediate-mass black hole. We present near-infrared imaging data of the ULX obtained with the William Herschel Telescope. Using this…
Gravitational waves from the binary black hole (BH) merger GW150914 may enlighten our understanding of ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs), as BHs>30Msun can reach luminosities>4x10^39 erg s^-1 without exceeding their Eddington limit. It is…
We examined spectral evolution in ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) with apparent luminosities of about 10^40 ergs/s. Based on new results in this paper and those reported in the literature, two common spectral behaviors were found. Some…
I suggest that there are two classes of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs), corresponding to super-Eddington mass inflow in two situations: (a) thermal-timescale mass transfer in high-mass X-ray binaries, and (b) long-lasting transient…
While there is now a consensus that X-ray binaries (XRBs) are the dominant X-ray sources in the early Universe and play a significant role during the epoch of heating of the intergalactic medium (IGM), recent studies report contradicting…
The discovery of fast and variable coherent signals in a handful of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) testifies to the presence of super-Eddington accreting neutron stars, and drastically changed the understanding of the ULX class. Our…
We search for transient sources in a sample of ULXs from the 3XMM-DR4 release of the XMM-Newton Serendipitous Source Catalogue in order to find candidate neutron star ULXs alternating between an accreting state and the propeller regime, in…
Ultraluminous x-ray sources (ULXs) in nearby galaxies shine brighter than any X-ray source in our Galaxy. ULXs are usually modeled as stellar-mass black holes (BHs) accreting at very high rates or intermediate-mass BHs. We present…
The ultra-luminous X-ray (ULX) source ESO 243-49 HLX-1 currently provides the strongest evidence for the existence of intermediate mass black holes. We conduct an ongoing monitoring campaign with the Swift X-ray Telescope and found that…
ULX-7, in the northern spiral arm of M51, demonstrates unusual behaviour for an ultraluminous X-ray source, with a hard X-ray spectrum but very high short-term variability. This suggests that it is not in a typical ultraluminous state. We…
One hundred fifty-four discrete non-nuclear Ultra-Luminous X-ray (ULX) sources, with intrinsic X-ray luminosities >1e39 ergs/s, are identified in 82 galaxies observed with Chandra's Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer. Source positions, X-ray…
Ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are X-ray bright (L$_{\rm X-ray} >$3$\times$10$^{39}$erg s$^{-1}$) extra-galactic objects that are powered by either neutron stars, or stellar or intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) but few have been…
We examined the variability of three ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs) in the 2003, 110 ks XMM-Newton observation of NGC253. Remarkably, we discovered ULX1 to be three times more variable than ULX2 in the 0.3--10 keV band, even though…
Ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULX) have so high X-ray luminosities that they were long thought to be accreting intermediate mass black holes. Yet, some ULX have been shown to display periodic modulations and coherent pulsations, suggestive…
We suggest that the ultraluminous X-ray sources located in external galaxies (ULXs) are supercritical accretion disks like that in SS433, observed close to the disk axis. We estimate parameters of the SS433 funnel, where the relativistic…
The thermal dominant state in black hole binaries (BHBs) is well understood but rarely seen in ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs). Using simultaneous observations of M82 with Chandra and XMM-Newton, we report the first likely identification…
For a long time, the well-known supercritically accreting binary SS433 is being proposed as a prototype for a class of hypothetical bright X-ray sources that may be identified with the so-called Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) in nearby…
We present a new, multi-mission catalogue of ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) candidates, based on recent data releases from each of the XMM-Newton, Swift and Chandra observatories (the 4XMM-DR10, 2SXPS and CSC2 catalogues, respectively).…